Stone Temple Pilots intended to support their third album,
Tiny Music, with an extensive tour in the spring of 1996, but their plans were derailed by singer
Scott Weiland, who once again succumbed to drug addiction. As
Weiland was in rehab, the remaining three
Pilots recruited former Ten Inch Men singer
Dave Coutts and recorded the material that became the eponymous debut by
Talk Show. Unsurprisingly,
Talk Show sounds like
Stone Temple Pilots circa
Tiny Music, only with a different singer. While
Dean and
Robert DeLeo still display a debt to
Led Zeppelin, it's balanced out by an infatuation with shiny glam-pop, which makes
Talk Show an easy listen, even if the hooks are a little too busy for their own good. Still, those riffs would be fine if
Coutts was as captivating a singer as
Weiland, but he's not. He's perfectly competent, but his voice lacks the character of
Weiland, which prevents
Talk Show from being anything other than a solid, unremarkable hard rock record. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine